Other languages

• Dutch: historie, storiegoed 
• French: histoire, vie 
• German: Historie  
• Italian: istoria, storia, historia, storietta, historietta
• Polish: historia, historyja
• Spanish: historia, relación 

Material form

Subject

Description

On early modern title pages the term ‘history’ (and its translations) was used very often for fictional as well as non-fictional narratives, in verse and prose alike. An English example is The history of Reynard the fox, first published by William Caxton in 1481. In German and Dutch the equivalent words ‘historij / hystorie’ and ‘historie’ were used for these narratives, too, as in Das erste buch der historyen vom Amadis (Frankfurt, 1617) or Een schoone historie van de vier heemskinderen (Amsterdam, 1802). Therefore, in German research the word ‘Prosahistorien’ is also chosen, when narratives written in prose are indicated. In Swedish and Danish, many narratives are named ‘historia’, too, like Een skiön och sänfärdigh historia om den tohl modige Helena aff Constantinopel (Stockholm 1679) or Historie om den skiønne Magelona (Haderslev 1806). Comparable expressions can be found in French (‘histoire’, e.g. Histoire des quatre fils Aymon, Troyes [1700]), Spanish (‘historia’, e.g. La historia de los nobles caualleros oliueros de castilla, Burgos 1499), Italian (e.g. Historia del giusto castigo dato a cinque donne in Roma […], Rome, 1666) and other European languages. 

In Spain, historias caballerescas (chivalric stories) were condensed, cheaply produced versions of the more expensive and voluminous chivalric novels. 

Related terms

narrative, story, account, novel, romance, martyr story

Sources

B. Besamusca, E. de Bruijn, F. Willaert (eds.), Early Printed Narrative Literature in Western Europe (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2019). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110563016

L. Carnelos, I libri da risma. Catalogo delle edizioni Remondini a larga diffusione (1650-1850) (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2008).

J. Gomis, ‘Echoes from the Middle Ages: Tales of Chivalry, Romances, and Nation-building in Spain (1750–1850)’, Studies in Medievalism 24 (2015), 93-113.

S. González-Sarasa Hernáez, Tipología editorial del impreso antiguo español, thesis Universidad Complutense de Madrid (2013), 386-388 (‘Caballerescas, historias’). https://eprints.ucm.es/id/eprint/24020/

M. Roggero, Le vie dei libri. Letture, lingua e pubblico nell’Italia moderna (Bologna: il Mulino, 2021). 

R. Schlusemann and K. Wierzbicka-Trwoga, ‘Narrative Fiction in Early Modern Europe. A Comparative Study of Genre Classifications’, Quaerendo 51 (2021), 160-188.

R. Schlusemann, Schöne Historien. Niederländische Romane im deutschen Spätmittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2016).